What is communication and what does it have to do with this?
When I dance, I am consciously reading and perceiving my environment. I want to know where I am, what I am and how I am. The environment gives out information and energy; sounds, smells, textures, movement. My dancing is a response to what is happening in my environment. My dance is an affecting of my environment. The environment changes as I move through it and interact with it and can be interpreted as a response to my dance. If I am perceiving the environment and responding to my perception, and the environment is changing and being affected by my dance, then I will say that this is a communication; a communication with the environment.
For me dancing is a communication with the space and the objects and people in the space. I enter this relationship with my senses aware. It requires my world to expand and to go beyond the ends of my physical self.
What is interesting to me is that babies employ this communication of the senses with the environment. As humans get older and adopt formal behaviours suggested to them by societies, they stop being aware of the larger world and live only within their own flesh/body parameters. I watch my 5yo and I am pleased to see that he is still responding and feeding back to the environment. He moves his arms wide, his fingers reach through the space, he leaps, he falls and swims through the floor, feeling, sensing something of the space through his skin that is informing his movement. I won't interrupt his communication, I watch his fluency in awe.
Amanda Baggs, describes this communication in her film In My Language. While Baggs most likely has a more heightened awareness of her senses, this connection to the senses that allows/affords us greater communication to space and environment is a foundational element of my dance.
When I dance, I am consciously reading and perceiving my environment. I want to know where I am, what I am and how I am. The environment gives out information and energy; sounds, smells, textures, movement. My dancing is a response to what is happening in my environment. My dance is an affecting of my environment. The environment changes as I move through it and interact with it and can be interpreted as a response to my dance. If I am perceiving the environment and responding to my perception, and the environment is changing and being affected by my dance, then I will say that this is a communication; a communication with the environment.
For me dancing is a communication with the space and the objects and people in the space. I enter this relationship with my senses aware. It requires my world to expand and to go beyond the ends of my physical self.
What is interesting to me is that babies employ this communication of the senses with the environment. As humans get older and adopt formal behaviours suggested to them by societies, they stop being aware of the larger world and live only within their own flesh/body parameters. I watch my 5yo and I am pleased to see that he is still responding and feeding back to the environment. He moves his arms wide, his fingers reach through the space, he leaps, he falls and swims through the floor, feeling, sensing something of the space through his skin that is informing his movement. I won't interrupt his communication, I watch his fluency in awe.
Amanda Baggs, describes this communication in her film In My Language. While Baggs most likely has a more heightened awareness of her senses, this connection to the senses that allows/affords us greater communication to space and environment is a foundational element of my dance.
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